The L.A. Times music blog

Album review: Maroon 5's 'Hands All Over'

September 22, 2010 | 5:38
pm

It says something serious about Maroon 5’s commitment to
professional polish that this popular L.A. outfit — already one of rock’s
slickest — opted to make its third studio disc with Robert “Mutt” Lange. He’s
the reclusive production whiz behind such radio-bait blockbusters as Def
Leppard’s “Hysteria” and “Come on Over” by his ex-wife, Shania Twain.

And, indeed, on “Hands All Over,” Lange successfully
pushes Maroon 5’s music to newly glossy heights: James Valentine’s guitar in
“Get Back in My Life” is more or less indistinguishable from Jesse Carmichael’s
keyboard, while “Don’t Know Nothing” sounds like some forgotten Motown tune
taken apart and reassembled by robots. Even the lightly country-fried closer,
“Out of Goodbyes” (with a lush vocal cameo by Lady Antebellum), glimmers with a
kind of space station sheen.

All that craft is deeply satisfying to ears accustomed to
current pop’s computerized precision; a light-funk groove as neatly executed as
the one in “Give a Little More,” for instance, is its own reward.

Yet “Hands All Over” reveals less about who frontman Adam
Levine is than did Maroon 5’s previous records; too often the songs cleave to
opaque generalities. Coming from a guy who’s written as frankly about
psychosexual drama as anyone else on the Top 40, that’s a disappointment,
especially when Levine flashes the occasional reminder of his old idiosyncrasy.

In lead single “Misery,” the latest in a long line of
Maroon 5 songs concerning romantic obsession, Levine zooms in on the image of
“your salty skin,” and for a second you realize that humans built this machine.